CONTENTS

About the Book

Paul Brunton was one of a very small number of his generation to travel so extensively throughout India and Tibet at a time when very few were doing so with such insight and discernment. His journalistic skills produced magnificent descriptions of the snowy peaks and high-desert landscapes of the Himalayan region but it was the lessons he learned from the holy men he met on his journeys that transformed him into one of the great interpreters of the East.

In this magnificent classic he explains that we all need ‘oases of calm in a world of storm’, no matter what era we are living in, and that to retreat from our everyday lives for a while is not weakness but strength. By taking the trouble to discover the deep silence within us we will find the benefits of being linked to an ‘infinite power, an infinite wisdom, an infinite goodness’.

A Hermit In The Himalayas is a fascinating blend of travel narrative and profound spiritual experience. As we accompany the author on his journey through the vast Himalayan ranges to Mount Kailas in Tibet, he also shows us an even more remarkable – and timeless – inner path which will help us cope with the ups and downs of our contemporary world.

About the Author

Born in 1898, Paul Brunton travelled extensively in the East and published thirteen books between 1935 and 1952. He is generally recognized as having introduced yoga and meditation to the West, and for presenting their philosophical background in non-technical language. He died in Switzerland (where he lived for 20 years) in 1981.

By the same author:

A Search in Secret India

The Secret Path

A Search in Secret Egypt

A Message from Arunachala

The Quest of the Overself

The Inner Reality

The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga

The Wisdom of the Overself

The Spiritual Crisis of Man

The Notebooks of Paul Brunton
(in sixteen volumes)

Essays on the Quest

Meditations for People in Charge

Meditations for People in Crisis

What is Karma?

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN 9781473527829
Version 1.0

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Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

Ebury is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright © Estate of Paul Brunton 1983

Paul Brunton has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published in 1937
This edition published by Rider in 2003

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781844130429

INTRODUCTION

Much has changed in the world since Paul Brunton wrote A Hermit in the Himalayas – and PB (as he is known to his followers) himself changed a good deal after writing this third and last of his travel books. At the same time, many things remain the same.

When PB began this journey, he hoped to spend some time in Tibet, but was prevented from doing so by governmental authorities. Nowadays, it is quite possible for tourists willing to ignore China’s Human Rights record to enter Tibet – but it is either dangerous or impossible for a Tibetan to do so. PB’s reflections on the British Rule of India – written years before India’s independence – may seem like a faint footnote to a bygone era. However, today’s news reminds us of the karma, challenges and fate awaiting a Western empire that supplants the culture and regime of an Eastern nation. The harsh clamour of contrasting cultures, politics and fates continues throughout the globe. Taken in this light, PB’s comments and suggestions are very relevant today.

I call the second theme ‘PB’s Responses’– his comments on a wide, and wild, variety of topics, including divorce, sex, UFOs, astrology, tea, and my favourite, shaving! As The Notebooks of Paul Brunton show, PB’s thoughts on some of these topics changed quite a bit over the years (except for tea, which he loved to the end of his days). Why, then, keep these older opinions around? Simply because the Paul Brunton of these pages is still a student of the Overself, as are we, which means we can immediately benefit from the perspective he brings to these various issues.

The third theme occupies the most space and is written beautifully. Indeed, much of it is about space and beauty: the grand solitary spaces of the Himalayas themselves, and the interior space of the indrawn mind. PB’s previous ‘travel’ books primarily explored the remarkable places and peoples of India and Egypt. Here he turns heart and pen towards Nature, recording the elegant simplicity of a hermetic retreat from the world. PB moves easily amongst the gentle and dramatic elements of his mountain home, at one moment absorbing the silence of a starry night, at another confronting a panther, protected only by his self-control. Yet his is no world-denying retreat. Instead we find PB establishing the parameters, purpose, and practices of retreat which will free us for a time from our secular entanglements, and return us to that world better able to meet it. This, then, is the core of the book: a pathway into the deep stillness of our higher self through sacred communion with nature herself.

Although PB himself first found his higher self on a mountaintop, it can also be found in a city park, or in one’s own back yard. So take this book outside, find a place of daily retreat, and, for a moment or two, feel the cool clarity and solemn silence of those distant mountains speaking their lesson in your heart.

Timothy Smith
Co-Editor, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton

Note: the state of Tehri Garhwal is today much as it was when PB visited it. Interested in learning more? Check out these websites:

http://tehri.nic.in/
http://www.gmvnl.com/districts/tehri/
http://www.garhwaltourism.com/tehri/

FOREWORD

By
PRINCE MUSSOOREE SHUM SHERE
JUNG BAHADUR RANA
of
NEPAL

It affords me much pleasure to write these introductory words to this, the latest^fn1 of my friend Paul Brunton’s books. The scene is set amid the long and famous range of mountains which separates India from Central Asia. The ridges and peaks which the author describes, as he saw them in Tehri State, are but a continuation of my own beloved Nepalese Himalayas. Born as I was in these mountains, I have a strong affection for the Himalayas, and the moments spent reading about them in Brunton’s original and attractive prose have been happy ones.

Only those who have been reared among the forest-clothed ranges and snow-clad heights of Himalaya will know that he has not over-praised them but done them simple justice. They must remain the most stupendous sight in all Asia, nay in all the world.

Prior to leaving the mountains the author visited me for a few days and during his stay showed me the manuscript of “A Hermit in the Himalayas”. It was then only that I discovered therein a few pages devoted to my own sudden visit to his retreat, when I crossed the ridges on horseback through friendship for one whom I regard as a spiritual prophet of our time. Had I known that his retentive memory was making silent and secret notes of all that I said, I might have been a little more careful in my utterances! For I did not know that he was keeping a journal in which he recorded some of the thoughts, events and conversations at odd intervals. Fortunately I can trust his discretion not to publish matters which are not the public’s concern.

This new book, being but a journal, is to me more interesting than a studiously composed work, for it necessarily bears an air of intimacy and frankness which can usually be found in diaries and journals alone. It admits one into the most secret thoughts of the gifted writer. He told me that when he looked through the pages before showing them to me he found them to be “horribly egotistical”, and felt inclined to consign them to burial under the mountains where they were written. But I assured him that egotism is an essential part of every memoir, and that these memoirs of his life in the Himalayas cannot escape from a quality which gives added interest and attraction to literature, even though it may be repulsive in society.

During the sojourn which is the subject of this book, Paul Brunton was, I believe, the only white man living in the little-known State of Tehri. Certainly few Europeans would care to go and isolate themselves amid wild and rugged mountains far from the haunts of civilized society, as he has done. Nevertheless I feel sure that he gained his reward, for even during the short period when I was his companion I must say that the days seemed marvellous: one was wafted away from all the awful realities of humdrum life to a world of dreams, peace and spirituality.

On this last theme it seems to me that his ideas in general, as expressed here and in other books, are specially fitted for the guidance of Western people and of those increasingly numerous Orientals who have taken to their mode of living and thinking. I personally find it easier to understand many intricate subtleties of our own Asiatic philosophies and spiritual techniques, including Yoga, when explained by Brunton in his scientific, rational, modern and unsectarian manner than when expounded in the ancient ways, which are so remote from twentieth century understanding.

One comes across many passages in the scriptures of most religions where mention is made of the Spirit speaking in different ways, through different tongues and different men. I am convinced that Brunton is one of the chosen instruments to re-interpret the half-lost wisdom of the East to those caught up in the mechanical life of the West, and thus serve His cause.

A book like this is intended for those who have either sympathy or yearning for the inner life of the Spirit. I can gauge the profound ignorance of the reviewer who, in a certain European-managed newspaper of Calcutta, denounced the author’s earlier work “A Search in Secret India” as false, denied the existence of any spirituality in India, and finally ridiculed the author’s competency to conduct these researches. All the best Indian journals and leaders of opinion have, nevertheless, given the highest praise to that book, thereby bringing out in contrast the lack of understanding and experience betrayed by the Western-born reviewer of the country in whose midst he lived.

His opinion was as much worth accepting as that of an uneducated pugilist on a priceless Chinese vase of the Ming dynasty.

I can personally testify that there are not only the Yogis in India as described in Brunton’s book, that is, men of supernormal attainments, marvellous powers and lofty spirituality, but others equally unusual whom he has not mentioned. Yet the average European and Western-educated Indian look with indifference, scorn and contempt upon his statements—thus proving that they have not been initiated into the world’s most valuable knowledge and Asia’s most treasured secret tradition.

As a Nepalese, belonging to a people who have rigidly maintained their land in absolute independence and proud exclusiveness, I can also testify that these ancient traditions of a mystic wisdom have been preserved in the mountain fastnesses of Nepal far better than even in India itself. But those only who seek as earnestly as the author can hope to penetrate into the society and secrets of the true Sages of Asia. His Calcutta critic would be beneath notice were it not that equally unfair prejudices constantly manifest themselves. Thus I have heard Europeans describe his Egyptian researches and Great Pyramid spirit-experience as “a mere journalistic stunt”! Once again they betray ignorance. Either they have never met Paul Brunton, or if they have, they were not permitted to share his inner life as I have shared it. Those who really know him—a difficult matter, I must admit—know that his sincerity is unquestionable and that his material sacrifices for the sake of discovering the elusive truth behind life have been great. Few really know him, and misunderstanding seems to be his ordained and accepted lot.

I am glad to have the opportunity of rendering my friend the little service of writing this introduction. May the much-needed message whose inner light flickers through the following pages bear the blessing of the hidden Sages of the Holy Himalayas!

^fn1 This was written in 1936.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST BRITISH EDITION

Lest readers wrongly believe that this is a new book, that I have broken the silence of several years with the following utterance, I must hasten to tell them that it is not. It was written more years ago than I like to remember. The sheets were struck off the press in Madras, near where I was staying at the time, and circulated in book form. A small number of them was sent to England and here issued in the same form but soon disappeared. A Hermit in the Himalayas was never reprinted, despite demands.

Although I did not return to the same Central Himalayan region which it describes, the tides of war did bring me to these stupendous mountains, first to the extreme Eastern end, on the frontiers of Sikkim, and later to the extreme Western end, overlooking Little Tibet.

It has never since been possible for me to forget the breath-taking grandeur of those endless rows of summits, gleaming in the sun as they half-lost themselves in the sky, nor the happy sound of rushing streams dancing on the floors of steep, rocky valleys.

It was inevitable that some of the points of view from which the reflections in this journal were written should become modified by the inner development and wider experience of passing years. But the general point of view remains substantially the same, and that is the need of gaining spiritual peace by regaining control of the mind and heart. It is not long since I came back from Oriental travel and tropical life to live in the Western hemisphere again, yet everything I have seen and heard here convinces me that this need is more urgent and more imperative than it was when the journal was written. If the world stands bewildered and confused in the face of its troubles, it is partly because we Westerners have made a God of activity; we have yet to learn how to be, as we have already learnt how to do.

We need these oases of calm in a world of storm. There are times when withdrawal to retreat for such a purpose is not desertion but wisdom, not weakness but strength. If we withdraw for a while so as to reconsider our goals and survey our courses, if we use the time and leisure to calm our agitations and sharpen our intuitions, we cannot be doing wrong.

However, I do not advocate rural or monastic retreat for the purpose otherwise than as a valuable temporary and occasional help, for the real battle must be fought out within one’s self, just where the aspirant now stands. Every successful passage through the tests provided by worldly life gives him a chance to make a spurt not only in consciousness and understanding but more especially in character. It offers him one quick way of changing his character for the better. The error which deems mystical belief and meditation practice as suitable only for, and confined to, ascetics, monks and holy men, or cranks, neurotics and freaks, is a serious one.

The old easy-travelling pre-war world has gone. Despite aeroplanes, Himalaya seems farther away to most Britons today than it was when I first entered its many-coloured domain under a turquoise sky. He who seeks a retreat cannot go far nowadays, perhaps no farther than the next county. Indeed, in these days of housing shortage, sometimes he cannot even get the undisturbed privacy of a room. Is the way closed, then? No. It is still open for all men, albeit differently. A half-hour, stolen from the day’s activities or the night’s rest, set apart for meditation in his own house, will in the end yield a good result. A useful suggestion for those who cannot get the right conditions at home or in the open air, is to try a church outside of service-hours. It is admittedly harder than trying the same exercise in a peaceful mountain valley, but wherever he is it is his mind alone that counts.

The tranquil passivity he sets out to reach, will eventually deepen and deepen until a point is felt where thinking is still and the mind emptied. Into this inner silence there enters, we know not how, the Overself’s godlike consciousness.

Those who spend sufficient time on the mystical quest, and with sufficient keenness and guidance, find it infinitely inspiring because it links them—however remotely weakly and momentarily—with an infinite power, an infinite wisdom, an infinite goodness.

The fruit of such meditations comes in the form of brief glimpses of the soul’s flower-like beauty. Although it comes only for a few minutes in most cases, its bloom endures and recurs in memory for years afterwards. Only the adept, he who has travelled far on his inward journey, is able to return at any time, and at will, to the serene beatitude of this high consciousness.

P. B.

January, 1949.

GOOD-BYE!

—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

CHAPTER ONE

The Philosophy of Friendship—On Pony-back in the Himalayas—My Bungalow on a Mountain-top.

THE LAST LAP of my journey will soon be over. After weeks of fitful travelling since I left the torrid triangular patch of South India, tonight I shall take to my bed with the pleasant consciousness that it will probably be a long time before the roll of brown blankets and white sheets is strapped up in its canvas covering again.

Not that the journey itself has not proved a welcome change. Even the gradual fall of the thermometer helps the sun-baked body, while the extensive panoramic succession of pictures and places stirs even the curiosity of the jaded intellect. There is a sense of freedom, a zest of relief, for a weary European who arrives here after the suffocating plains, where the summer heat lies like a shimmering pall.

Best of all, one has had the pleasure of meeting old friends and making new ones. It is true that a man who bases his friendships on spiritual affinity, rather than on the ties of self-interest or of worldly associations, cannot hope to count many, for the dictates of the Overself must be obeyed and the different degrees of understanding—as well, I often find, of misunderstanding—themselves erect unscaleable barriers between those whom God hath not joined together in the pleasure of friendship.

When I reflect now over the variety of some of the external appearances beneath which I found this affinity during the present journey, I am astonished at the possibilities with which life presents us once we begin to walk in the shoes of the Overself, however intermittently and however weakly.

A bespectacled merchant in costly silks whose shop fate has set in a crowded Bazaar; a shrewdly intellectual assistant editor of a newspaper who talks politics and economics while I sip an iced drink; an illiterate workman who labours from dawn till night throughout the week for a meagre wage, and whose tragic poverty illustrates for me the truth that those who have perspired in the battle of life, but never bled, do not really know what it means; a middle-aged noble-minded Maharajah who belongs to the Victorian epoch in his earnest regard for moral restraints and in his melancholy observations upon the decadence which is fast overtaking today’s younger generation; a young English headmaster who is trying, with fresh eyes and fiery enthusiasm, to lift educational methods out of the antiquated ruts in which he found them; a forceful and dominant Minister whose abilities have made him the central figure in the Government of a large Indian State and whose fluent conversation provides me with an intellectual stimulus; a Spiritual Head of an Indian religious fraternity who benignantly ignores differences of belief in the deep regard that ties us to each other; a penniless and possessionless Yogi who meditates on mysterious forces the while he sits upon the Ganges bank beyond Rishikesh, that unique town where recluses, monks and pilgrims make their permanent or temporary abode; with great calmness he tells me how he separated the spirit from the body and found himself witnessing scenes in far-off Calcutta or even hearing the noise of London traffic as he looked down upon it! Then there is a young Bengali lady who has achieved an exceptional height of spiritual realization, and whose face reminds one of the beatitude-filled face of St. Teresa, the while she sits with half-closed eyes surrounded by a large group of devotees; a lean, bent old Muhammedan grey-beard who takes me through dingy Delhi alleys and bazaars to the Jumma Masjid, India’s largest mosque, where he discourses to me of his youthful adventures upon the Mecca pilgrimage, and then tells me how he is preparing himself for another kind of pilgrimage, to wit, his exit from this world. He is likeable, this grey-beard, for he does not hesitate to mix a little fun with his philosophy.

There are several others, both known and unknown, who touch my trail so intimately; they are perhaps more mundane in mind, but that does not prevent us being completely at ease with one another. A man must be ready to touch life at many sides if he would really live; even as a great Exemplar did not disdain to consort with the world’s rejected and despised sinners; yet always he should do so where the inner attraction is mutual and spontaneous, not otherwise. Not seldom the most startling life-changes come about in this way. One of the first people whom Christ induced to price life at its proper value, or, in common parlance, whose soul He saved, was not a respectable prop of civic authority and civic virtue, but a harlot.

When I was revisiting a certain city after some years’ absence abroad a friend there offered to give a little party in my honour to enable me “to meet the leading men of the town”. I flatly refused. I had no desire to meet the leading men of any town. Besides, why all the bother! I had done a bit of journalism, a bit of editing, and a bit, I hope, of finer writing in a few books. I had made a few uncommon researches. That was all. Lots of men have done that, and more. Time to give a party when I shall have accomplished something worthwhile, when I shall have climbed the Himalaya of the soul and reached its white summit. And if that ever happens I fear the leading men of the town will not then want to meet me!

There are still others whom I would have liked to meet again, but, alas, time will not tarry. I dare not dally on my northward way. For I have a goal, an objective, one too which is of the highest importance to me.

* * *

And so now I am sitting in the saddle astride a sturdy ash-grey mountain pony, listening to the chime of its jingling harness-bells and moving at walking pace up the steep slippery trails that are leading me into the rarefied air of the Himalayan^fn1 ridges. It would be untrue to say that both of us are not tired and will not welcome the final halt when it comes, nor that the string of coolie-porters who are moving half a mile or so behind me in single file under the leadership of my servant, bearing baggage and provisions, will not be glad to take their agreed pay and last dismissal. Even the pony has developed an unfortunate and unpleasant habit of wandering stupidly to the extreme outside edge of the narrow trail, where a dangerous, sparsely timbered ravine of three thousand feet depth awaits it like a yawning abyss; on the inner side, the path leads against the perpendicular face of the ridge out of which it is carved. It would be extremely easy for the animal to go down the fearfully abrupt slope infinitely faster than it came up, and finally measure its length upon the ground. The idea of sliding all the way down to the ravine bottom does not make much appeal to me. The feeling remains and returns that I must check my steed firmly. I therefore pull frequently at the left rein, but the obstinate pony just as frequently makes for the precipice’s edge the whilst I sway in the saddle! I cannot see what attractive bait lures it towards utter destruction, but I have no intention of sharing its impending fate down that precipitous glen.

Why it should want to forsake its subsolar existence at the prime of life I do not really know, but this afternoon it deliberately dangled its right foreleg into space over the precipice edge, with the result that it slipped and stumbled, sending me to the ground with a thud, a bruised hip and painfully dislocated shoulder. I thought that the time had now arrived for the two of us to have a serious, heart-to-heart talk and I endeavoured to point out to the melancholy creature the obvious error of its ways in skirting precipices so obstinately. Apparently the conversation did some good, for it raised its sad but handsome head a little higher and thereafter kept its feet on terra firma. It set its hooves down with greater care and no longer did a mere hair’s breadth separate us both at times from the terrifying drop. I rewarded the pony later with a couple of spoonfuls of my precious sugar, once, alas, so common that it grew thickly in the plains around me, but now to be carefully conserved and thriftily ladled out, lest my supplies should run out before their estimated calendared month and my tea thereby rendered totally unpalatable.

The leader of the coolies has told me that the pony’s undesirable habit has been inherited from a Tibetan pack-pony parent, which used to carry huge loads in sacks swung so broadly across its back as to force it to keep away from the inner side of tracks, so that the load might clear the rocks on that side.

The sun has shone directly down all day with a heat that surprises me, yet it is a tolerable and not trying heat, something indeed like the temperature of good August summer weather in Europe. In comparison with the terrific enervating heat of the broiling plains, it is certainly paradisaical.

At a turn in the ever-winding cliff trail, which is climbing higher and higher, a whole new panorama of breath-taking scenic beauty is displayed before my wondering eyes. That Nature could pile up cyclopean peaks and mountain ridges with such a generous hand and in such indiscriminate shapes is something which tame European eyes can scarcely believe. Look where one will, in every direction, one is hemmed in by her Himalayan giants. To the north-east, a realm of perpetual frost, the colossal towering barrier that keeps Tibet a suspicious and secluded alien in a world knit into friendly communication by every conceivable means, rears its crevassed grey flanks, white snow-mantled shoulders and bluish icy head to the sky from the shadowed ravines at its base. Enormous masses of smooth shining snow glitter upon it. To the east, a long irregular line of forest-covered heights and spurs stretches away, tier over tier, until it loses itself in the distant horizon. To the west, I look down into great rugged gorges of greyish olive-green blended with rich brown that meet and unite in a vast bowl of rock and earth thousands of feet below. To the south, I can but raise my head and crick my neck, as I gaze at the uplifted summit of the lofty purple granite cliff which towers above my pony only a couple of feet away from the animal’s side, and which dominates the immediate landscape.

All this plethora of camel-backed ridges split by deep chasms, soaring peaks and sharply cut ravines lies strewn confusedly with one branching out of the other or running parallel with it for a length and then twisting off at a tangent to meet it suddenly again. The map-makers must have had a hard job, here, methinks, amid this heap of endless confusion, harder than amongst the level farms and unfenced fields of the plains. The heights have been thrown up haphazard, just anyhow. There is nothing Euclidean here, not a sign of the straight geometrical layout of New York.

It is strange to remember suddenly that all Himalaya whirls with this ball of ours around the sun at more than eighteen miles per second.

Yet the rugged charm of this display makes it more attractive than any other natural scene I know. I take Nature’s gift thankfully. The Gods who made this land must have been beauty-drunk. The wild beauty of the scene outsteps imagination. It inspires the mind and uplifts the soul. Were I a Shelley I would quickly become lyrical over this region, but, alas, I am not. For the lordly Himalayas exist within an aura of complete solitude which is ineffably peaceful and inspiringly grand. In these Himalayan highlands there arises the true charm of mountaineering; civilization is so remote, towns so distant and serenity so prevalent. They carry the suggestion of eternity, although there are hill ranges in the south which, geologically, are far older. The tremendous heights are, perhaps, chiefly responsible for this suggestion. Here one is face to face with the universal mystery itself, hiding behind no man-made façade of gregariously built cities but revealing its calm challenging face directly and assuming its wildest form. Himalaya embodies the grand forces of Nature.

* * *

We continue climbing the narrow track. The steep paths of Himalaya are akin to the steep paths of life itself. But I adventure up the rugged trail with music sounding in my ears. God is luring me on. I am riding, not merely into Himalaya, but into heaven. I have forsaken one world only in order to find a better. No hardships have come to me, none can come to me, for they would first have to penetrate into the region of my heart, and they cannot do that. The air is sweet with love that emanates from the Supreme Being. The mountains are flushed with beauty that belongs, not to them, but to God. The entire journey has become a glorious poetic symbol. The quest of the Holy Grail is its divine reality.

My pony’s feet move unsteadily upon the flinty stones, crumbled rock and dislodged granite fragments which intermittently litter the way, having fallen from the slopes above. Fitful patches of grass occasionally survive the stony ground. Sometimes the trackside proudly flaunts a few flowers even. Both mint and marigold are here.

On the way I pass a curious sight. A coolie is carrying a lady in a queer conical wicker basket which is tied around his back. The passenger’s husband walks behind. Both are pilgrims to some holy Himalayan shrine, although they have not taken the customary route. The lady is not infirm, but the labour of walking steep trails is too much for her.

A mountain spring bubbles slowly across the track out of a rocky cleft in the massive wall of forest-covered slope. It creates a shallow puddle and then drops over the side of the chasm. The pony suddenly stops, drops its head to the ground, and thirstily sucks the puddle. Had I not sensed what it was going to do, I might easily have been tumbled out of the saddle again and down into the gaping ravine. But I take the precaution of dismounting in advance!

From this point the trail keeps fairly horizontal and we move at a faster pace. Nevertheless, because of the winding nature of the country, we have to make considerable detours around the outside of peaks and the inside of valleys; no short cuts are possible.

Fir trees flourish hereabouts upon the mountain side and are held in the tight-coiled grasp of creepers which climb in spirals around their bark. Once I see a solitary rhododendron-tree ablaze with red blossoms, and again a few clustering stars of flower-blooms.

Eventually the sun begins its fated decline, the heat rapidly diminishes, a lustrous yellow pallor sinks over the landscape as the sky turns to transparent amber.

Occasionally a gliding vulture and circling eagle sweep through the turquoise blue sky to their eyries. I notice how the vulture does not fly jerkily like other birds, but with movements exactly like those of an aeroplane. It balances flat on its wings and glides evenly up or down.

Once I hear the cuckoo. Its call makes me think of spring’s sure recurrence in Europe.

Sundown brings a rapid change of colours. The peaks and crags of ethereal white which rise to the sky are now warmed by the waning beams into masses of coral and pink; but this is only temporary. The descent of the dying sun transforms the frosted silver of the snows from colour to colour, while suffusing the lower forest-covered ridges with saffron. The red drifts into gold and the gold returns once again to yellow. And when the final rays take their leave, the warm colourings also abandon the range and the snows assume a chalky whiteness. The pallor becomes more pronounced and ends in greyish-white.

Sunset, alas, is but a short interval ’twixt day and night in the East, but these colourful moments are most precious to me.

Soon a shroud of vagueness envelops the whole countryside. But the moon rises early from behind the range and fortunately it is a thick crescent, so that we can see our direction clearly enough under its beams as soon as my eyes become accustomed to the spreading darkness. Nevertheless, when our route takes us, after much twisting and turning, along the top of a forest-clothed ridge, we find ourselves surrounded by blackness and can scarcely pick our way through the trees. At last we emerge into the silvery light once more and then my pony has a three-mile stretch of level visible mountain-side track before it.

The chief practical advantage of such a path, I reflect dryly, is that you cannot possibly lose your way. No signposts are provided merely because no signposts are needed. You may go forward or turn back and retreat, but you cannot go anywhere else—unless, indeed, you know how to scale perpendicular cliffs or to descend abrupt precipices. This is far better than wandering through a strange city, where nothing is easier than getting oneself lost.

Yes, it is the last lap of the journey. We ride through a monstrous yet beautiful ghost-world. Leaves turn to silver in the moonbeams and tree-trunks seem to be carved out of frosted stone. There is something indescribably weird in the picture of pale moonlight on the world’s giants. I judge the time to be about nine o’clock, but I cannot tell with exactness, for my wristlet watch has been smashed in the unlucky accident and henceforth I must exist timeless until my return to civilization. Not that it will be any noticeable loss, I decide sardonically, for time and I can well part with each other for a few months. The earth must henceforth turn in its diurnal course unheeded. Moreover, it was better for me to have fallen a few feet than three thousand.

Silhouetted against the black background of the sky, which is now rapidly filling with the first multitude of trembling stars which arrive with their jewels as ambassadors of the night, stands the rising terrace of peaks that crosses the far end of our route transversely and blocks the valley. It is like a line crowded with pyramids. Each is now a wraith-like titan, grand, grim, yet undeniably beautiful. Each mocks at this puny pony-mounted creature that dares to invade its silent realm. For the Himalayas, in this weird light, has become the fabled land of the giants. Here, those fairy stories which cheered our childhood may well come true. It is fitting that I should suddenly detect, on the western horizon, the beautiful star-cluster of the Pleiades in the zodiacal constellation of Taurus. Not an ancient people exists but has its legend of these seven daughters of Atlas who were raised to the heavens and transformed into stars.

I push on more eagerly. It is fortunate that we have sufficient moonlight to guide us, because I see that the forest-hidden nature of the country might quite possibly cause me to miss my destination and override the pony unnecessarily. And this, I am ashamed to confess, does happen. We travel a quarter-mile too far when an uneasy and growing sense of being wrong completely overwhelms me and forces me to dismount and turn the pony’s head in the direction whence we have come. My electric torch lies thoughtlessly packed in my baggage. There is no help for it but to make a slow and careful exploration on foot. And after I have done this I discover that the trail almost skirts the top of the ridge at one point, where a little clearing has been made in the dense forest and covers the mountain-side from top to bottom.

I tether the animal to a tree and clamber up the short steep bank to the summit. There, gleaming palely in the moonbeams, are the whitewashed walls of a solitary bungalow set amid a wild yet Arcadian region upon the very crest of the mountains! I have reached my new home.

A few paces beyond the building brings me to the edge of another deep gorge, which abuts on the southern face of the ridge. It is clear that I shall have to walk warily hereabouts in future!

Once more I reward the pony which, despite its legacies of painful injuries to my person, has carried me successfully to this unique and attractive domicile. On this occasion I plunge a hand more deeply into my pocket and it eagerly gobbles up the liberal helping of sugar.

A cold wind comes blowing off the snows, and I turn up my jacket collar.

Overhead, the sky scintillates with its wealth of beauty. Planets wander through the firmament with unnatural brilliancy. The stars, in their high heaven, arc like clusters of diamonds upon the crowned hair of night.

And now I sit down beside the path to wait patiently for the party of bearers whom I have outdistanced some hours previously. I fall into a reverie of the night until, after a time, I am awakened by hallooing shouts and cries of welcome. Once again the gregarious sense reasserts itself and I feel pleased that we are all together again. I count my train of coolies, add the servant, and note that all are safe after their journey. Their jolly faces smile in accord with mine when I inform them lightly, “We are seven!” and add a few lines from a certain poem, but they miss the subtle Wordsworthian allusion. Perhaps they imagine I am chanting a prayer to my strange gods, in thanksgiving for our arrival, but I do not know.

The baggage is hauled up the bank and deposited inside the bungalow. Bags are opened, candles and matches are found, and the ceremony of paying off the bearers gone through. They are wiry, well-knit little men belonging to the hill-tribes. They are remarkably strong and sturdy. Coolies drawn from their class can carry a hundredweight load on their backs day after day—not that I have ever given them such an inhuman load, fifty pounds being their average. Yet their diet is often nothing more than rice and parched peas—and not much at that—with a little milk to wash it down.

One wonders how much meat and how many meals a day a European porter would need to eat to support such work. My own coolies have their chief meal in the morning, and only an extremely light one later. These tough tribesmen can stand more heat and cold, weight-carrying and height-climbing, than their slimness suggests as possible.

I forestall their demands for baksheesh by giving them a sum which silences their garrulous leader. They will have but a short sleep, they tell me soon, and be off before dawn, taking the pony with them.

My servant opens the bedrolls. Tired and dusty as we are, unfamiliar with our location, we have no time to take further stock of our surroundings but disregard all else and throw our bodies into that mysterious yet ever-welcome condition which the world calls sleep.

^fn1 Pronounced Himm-ahl’-yan (accent on second syllable). The word means “Abode of Snow”.

CHAPTER TWO

Projected Expedition to Mount Kailas in Tibet—Magnificence of the Snowy Mountain Scenery—I Discover “The Sanctuary”.

ONE DAY A scientist will give us the mathematics of slumber, working out to precise fractions the ratio of the degree of fatigue to the period of unconsciousness. But whatever ratio he produces for the delectation of the curious, I am certain that he will need to revise his figures in the case of the dwellers on the Himalayan highlands.

For both of us awake after a briefer sleep than we normally enjoy, yet more refreshed and more vital than heretofore. It may be that the clean crisp air, when inhaled, assists the body to restore its worn-out functions more rapidly than under other conditions. At any rate, we set about the day’s activities at an early hour and light a lamp whilst awaiting the coming of the dawn, when the peaks will show indistinctly against a dark blue sky and rays of the rising sun will then tinge the snowline.

I wander through the bungalow. It is a simple, elementarily furnished place, as befits a lonely abode on the mountains. Three sets of double doors open into my room, one leading from the dining-room, another to the bathroom (no tiled walls and porcelain bath affair, this, but just a bare room holding a zinc tub for cold water), and the third opens directly on the forest. Light enters through glazed panels in the last door.

So this is to be my new home. Suddenly I remember a warning hint that it is haunted, but I take the thought lightly. Even if it once were justified, it cannot be now. I am ready to believe that the departed did show himself in a faintly phosphorescent form once or twice in an effort to retain his foothold on this familiar earth, but I am not ready to believe that he is still here. No ghost can flourish long in this healthy mountain air nor exist without becoming miserably lonely and utterly bored by the lack of appreciation. What encouragement can a poor ghost expect in this lonely dwelling, shut up unused as it is for a few years at a time? A self-respecting ghost needs an audience. And what audience can he expect here—unless it be the pine trees, the shaggy bears or the penetrating winds? No—he needs company, society, if he is to keep his nerves in order. I am sure that I shall find the warning groundless.